Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

He Kept recalling her lying on his bed; she reminded him of no one in his former life.

The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.

I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.